


Martin Q. Blank, Session Six

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Grosse Point Blank (1997)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-19
Updated: 2006-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:30:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1626806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Oatman's files: Martin Q. Blank, Session Six. For the record, this is the second session that Martin has returned to faithfully after having told Dr. Oatman that he is a professional killer. Dr. Oatman remains perceptive, yet unamused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Martin Q. Blank, Session Six

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry that this wasn't actually set during a flashback, but this was the story that hit me when I got the prompt. I wanted to do something that caught that kitchy-fast-fast dialogue that makes the film so fabulous to me personally. I hope that I captured at least some of that essence for you and I hope that you gain some pleasure from it because I really did try to give you a good story.   
>  Thanks to Skitty the Great for putting up with me during my writing process and listening to me angst about it all along the way. 
> 
> Written for Shusu

 

 

Martin shifted in the creaking leather chair, stiff the way luxury leather furniture always seemed to be. He'd never understood why people bought furniture that was so uncomfortable, but he'd never understood the kind of statements that could be made with luxury. Martin was used to making statements in a much more literal sense.

Dr. Oatman winced in what was becoming a characteristic way for him since Martin had disclosed the nature of his business. Martin had yet to figure out if the doctor genuinely thought he was unprofessional enough to assassinate the man on a scheduled visit or if Oatman didn't believe him when Martin had said _I know where you live_.

Oatman should have figured out by now that Martin never lies. He's terrible at it and prevarications always caused him to feel like he was developing an ulcer. Nothing funny about ulcers. Martin's father had been a chronic alcoholic -dealing with a psychotic wife and a terminally unimpressive son had driven him to the bottle for comfort- whose Stomach Troubles had haunted Martin long after the man had actually died from liver failure.

"Martin, I told you on our last visit that _that_ would be our **last visit**. I can't have you coming here for therapy now that I know who you are."

Oatman rubbed a red line into his brow as he concentrated hard on addressing his desk rather than Martin. He did seem a bit more upset than Martin would have believed of the man who had written a bestseller - _Kill Who? A Warrior's Dilemma_ \- on the nature of the warrior's mind.

"You know who I am? You've always known who I am. Martin Blank. Martin. I haven't changed who I am in two visits, Dr. Oatman. I'm still the same man. I resent the implication that now that you know the nature of my personal professional venture, you somehow think I've become a different person."

Martin's hands hung lax between his spread knees, arms lying loose on his knees. He had settled as well as could be expected in the uncomfortable, impressively-creaking chair, but it faced the desk and left his back exposed. The door was solid oak and Martin had taken care to scope out his walk on the way over, but he couldn't be too careful. There was no such thing as too careful in this world because paranoia? Was bred for a reason. Martin was that reason.

Oatman held up his hands in surrender and sighed at his evidently endlessly fascinating blotter. He waved heartily at Martin before commencing what Martin considered to be the _actual_ session portion of their appointment. Martin kept time based on give-and-take rather than minutia such as was kept by the luxurious clock ticking away the office's background.

"Fine. Fine. This is the last time though, Martin. I simply can not condone what it is that you do and which you seem to be quite unnervingly comfortable with. You do know, Martin, most people who do what you do and don't have attacks of conscience have a specific diagnosis in the psychiatric profession? You know what I'm saying to you, Martin?"

Oatman looked concerned or possibly patronizing, but Martin had never been good at gauging other people's emotions. People were too volatile for his tastes. He really didn't like people and Oatman was beginning to remind him why he really didn't like doctors either.

"You're not saying anything, Dr. Oatman. You're _implying_ -rather offensively, may I add- that I'm a sociopath or a psychotic or a serial killer of some sort which is not remotely what I told you. I'm a business man. I'm a professional. You're a professional. Surely you understand what it's like to have a job that's viewed differently from the outside. There's plenty of medical professionals who don't even think that psychiatrists are real doctors. Don't you think you're being a bit hypocritical here?"

"Who, Martin? Which medical professionals don't believe that psychiatrists are real doctors? And what does that have to do with you killing people?"

Oatman sounded so tired, so defeated, for a moment, Martin considered simply walking out the door. He shoved the impulse aside as quickly as it had come to him since that would only breed more paranoia than if he kept doggedly coming to his sessions on time. Martin had enough experience with paranoia -both breeding it and dealing with its care and feeding- to know how it worked.

"It doesn't matter who. It doesn't matter. I don't want to talk about it anyway. You said my work makes you uncomfortable. I don't want to make you uncomfortable and put a strain on our professional relationship, so as one _professional_ to another, I say I don't want to talk about work."

Martin was getting impatient. Antsy. His back was exposed and it was a good, solid door. It was an expensive, impressive door, and he was sitting in an expensive, impressive chair that was fitting for an office that was protected by such an expensive, impressive door. It was a fucking uncomfortable chair, but he was sitting in it and he was paying for this session and Oatman was going to deliver the product if Martin was paying for its procurement. That was business. That was professional. Martin Blank was a fine professional.

"Okay. Fine. You don't want to talk about work, I don't want you to talk about work. I don't want to know, you don't want to tell me. Now, you tell me, Martin, how are we supposed to proceed with this relationship under these circumstances?"

Fucking Oatman and his impressive speech patterns and his stupid office layout.

"I don't see as how this is so cut and dried. A man is more than his job. Just because a guy works for a Buddy Burger, flipping single patties all day, that doesn't mean he is nothing more than a lump of non-animal byproduct sizzling in his own grease. I can be more than my job. Separate the man from the mission, Oatman. That's what I'm asking you to do so that we can get back on track. We need to get back on track with my road to recovery. That's what you told me when I started coming to you for sessions and that's what I want from you now."

"What?"

Martin wondered if he wouldn't be better off scratching his contract with Oatman and starting fresh with a new vendor. He forced himself to resettle both physically and mentally: a man is more than his profession, a man can rise above his training.

"The road to recovery, Dr. Oatman. I want to get back on that road and get back---get back to living rather than simply _existing_. I want to feel alive again. Can't you understand that?"

Martin was practically oozing sincerity even as his foot tapped a strange off-beat staccato rhythm on the impressive, expensive padding of Dr. Oatman's designer Persian rug. The whole office was put together with some kind of Zen ambiance in mind, Martin was sure, but mostly he was tired of trying to get used to it or feel influenced by it or whatever it was he was _supposed_ to be feeling from it and hadn't quite achieved yet. Visiting Oatman had become more an exercise in control and endurance training than a real attempt at gaining self-awareness. Martin was fine with that though; he already knew himself and he had always liked pushing the limits.

"Okay, Martin. Why don't you try to tell me again how it all started out? Tell me how it began. One more time. I'm listening."

Martin considered, then agreed to humor the man. He was the doctor after all and a lot of people seemed to like hearing how it all started out. How does a person become a killer? What kind of person becomes a killer? What made _you_ become a killer? Martin was used to those questions; they'd almost become routine at one point in his life. He was telling the truth when he said he was a bad liar. Martin had known that for years, so he mostly never even bothered to try. How did it all start? Easy: prom night 1986.

"It was like---have you ever heard about those people who go to sleep one night, perfectly normal, perfectly heterosexual, then they wake up gay?"

Oatman didn't look as though he was getting the reference, but he did look as though he was getting more and more convinced that Martin was a psychopath. Martin raked his hair back up impatiently before trying to clarify.

"I'm not saying it was exactly like that per se. I mean, waking up gay and waking up with the knowledge that you can kill someone isn't the same thing at all. There's nothing, you know, abnormal about homosexuality. I'm not gay though. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I've just never felt the urge myself. Not that I think it's an urge really. I think that's more an innate characteristic, but what was I saying again?"

"You were telling me about how you woke up with the urge to kill someone and denying possibly latent homosexual tendencies."

Oatman looked fascinated again which was a plus, but Martin wasn't really appreciating his sentiments at the present which added to the minus column and negated the dubious progress he was gaining with all the sharing. Fine. He could clarify and then they could move on. Regress to progress, right? That was something he'd read about starting out his journey on the elusive road to recovery.

"No. There are no latent homosexual tendencies. Just to clarify there. Not that there's anything wrong with that. They're just not applicable here. At any rate, I guess that's how it happened. I woke up and everything was the same except I had this---this pressing knowledge that if I killed someone, I wouldn't care. I was completely dispassionate about the whole possibility. I realized that I was very likely a bad influence on those around me and resolved to get myself evacuated from the site stat."

"You joined the army then?"

They'd already covered this, but Oatman was still talking and they were getting somewhere. They could really get somewhere, Martin was sure, if they could get the ball rolling in the right direction. Identify the target, then engage and eliminate. It was a simple process once it was started.

"Yes."

"You never had any violent tendencies before that moment? You never had a fight that got out of hand on the playground, a pet that you just wanted to kick maybe once or twice really hard, or---or a fight with that girlfriend of yours that got a bit more physical than usual?"

Martin scowled. The space between his shoulder blades was tingling with something he'd have called Spidey-sense back before that day in question. After he'd signed up with the government, Martin had put aside all the normal oddities of his adolescence and they only returned to him in fits and spurts like glimpses of someone else's life far distant from himself. He sat back in the chair and steepled his fingers in front of his face.

"I was never violent. No fights and no cruelty to animals. Ever."

"You never even got a little rough with your girlfriend in bed? Spanking or maybe she struggled a bit and you couldn't help yourself?"

Oatman could be persistent. That much, Martin was willing to grant him.

"I----"

Martin suddenly remembered with startling clarity how scared he'd been of Debi Newberry's father. Big, brash and powerful, Bart Newberry had been the antithesis of Victor Blank and Martin had never been able to handle him. He'd always been trying to live up to Bart Newberry's example, to be worthy of dating Bart Newberry's daughter. Martin had gotten straight-A's, dressed better than his family could afford, and stayed way out of the local limelight so that he would be worthy to be the boyfriend of Bart Newberry's daughter. For a long time, Martin hadn't even been able to associate with her as "Debi." She'd been "Debi Newberry."

Oatman seemed to get that Martin was having a moment and he pounced on it like a rabid dog. Maybe psychiatrists could scent mental breakthroughs or something, Martin wouldn't put it past the man to have that kind of training. He respected Dr. Oatman as a professional after all.

"You did get rough with her, didn't you? That Debi you've been having the dreams about. Tell me, Martin, were you violent with her a lot?"

"No! No. I was never really violent with her. We just---her dad, man. He was a Hell of a guy. Big money and very nice with the clothes and the whole package. I was never good enough for his daughter. I was top of my class, no real problems, some detentions here and there that I couldn't get smoothed over before I had to serve my time, but I was still never _enough_ for him. Man."

Martin got lost in how big Bart Newberry had seemed when he was seventeen and such a lightweight that he didn't even make featherweight division standards. He could still picture every poster on the walls of Debi's room, hear the exact squeak that came from her bed -the magic bed- when they were having sex, and feel the same terror that at any moment, Bart might walk in on them and tear him apart for even _daring_.

"So. How was the sex? Was it rough? Did you tear her clothes? Did she bruise easily? Keep talking, Martin. You need to let it out."

"Did she bruise easily? Are you serious? She was my best friend! This was Debi Newberry! I loved her. I did. I would have never hurt her. I am not -for the last time- a psychopath! It's just that we had to have sex at her place a lot of times. My mom was...unwell and my dad was always drinking and we got caught so much at school. Hell, there was nowhere else."

Martin's pulse was going up from thinking about how wild he'd felt, fucking Debi in an empty classroom with the slit window in the door that anyone walking by could see in. He'd gotten quite the reputation from being so careless.

"Your best friend? You never told me that. You never mentioned that, Martin."

Oatman sounded offended. Like Martin had left out something vital and necessary in his dossier. Martin hadn't really thought that was such a big revelation. Debi had been a part of his life for so long, Martin really couldn't free associate when she'd become integral to his every day life.

"I thought I did. I didn't think it mattered. She was though. I spent every day with her. I told her everything. I trusted her implicitly."

"What about that Paul person? I thought he was your best friend?"

Oatman was _not_ letting this one go. Martin wondered if it could be that important after all. His spine wasn't tingling so much but his scalp was beginning to prickle so he slouched down further in the chair, leather creaking loudly as his suit snagged and dragged down it. Martin was at least getting his money worth this session. Dr. Oatman would have to come to terms with their agreement in time, Martin had been right all along; they could make their professional relationship work regardless of the nature of Martin's professional life.

"Paul Spericki? Paul was tight with me, sure, but he wasn't Debi. I wasn't a real friend for Paul anyway. I was an ideal."

"An ideal? Are you saying he emulated you? You inspired him in some way?"

Martin looked at the clock ticking, discomfort creeping across every inch of his skin. This was not who he was and it wasn't really who he used to be either. A man is not defined by the roads he has walked on so much as by the road he is traveling on in the now. He was choosing to walk the road to recovery. He could do this.

"Paul was a nobody in high school. That's what I'm saying. He liked to hear about things and be seen with me. He was that guy who had a crush on the cheerleading captain even though she was dating the quarterback who could literally break him in half."

"You were a somebody, Martin?"

Martin's heart skipped a beat, but found rhythm again as he balanced himself with the tick-tock-tick of the impressive, expensive clock that added such dutiful ambiance to Oatman's office. Martin had finally decided that he did -in fact- hate this office.

"I wasn't nobody. Anyway. I was telling you about Debi."

"Debi! Yes. Go on. Her father intimidated you."

Martin shot the doctor a look that should have conveyed a world of information about the nature of intimidation. He felt that it worked out alright when Oatman settled back into his own chair with a creak of springs.

"Bart Newberry was an intimidating man and I was some punk teenager who was fucking his daughter. We were having sex in her room and the bed springs were creaking and she just _would not_ stop moaning. I kept telling her to stop and she wouldn't and finally I heard her father coming down the hall, but I knew there was no time to move or anything, so I put my hand on her mouth. I must have covered up her nose too because she got really flushed and--and--I heard him move away, but I was so scared she'd start being loud again, I didn't move my hand. I kept my hand over her face to keep her quiet and fucked her until I finished, until she was kicking me and struggling to get me to stop, but I did this thing that she liked and she came so hard. She bit me and I let her go and she was crying from it. She told me it was the most powerful orgasm she'd ever had."

Martin was focused back on the rug without knowing that he'd come to appreciate the value of that impressive, expensive antiquity. There was something to be said for fine carpeting though. Martin thought it had something to do with luxury not having to be synonymous with discomfort, but that could have just been the chair talking.

"You hurt her. You held her down and you kept her quiet and you kept going, Martin. That's a pretty violent sort of act. They've got a word for that act too, you know."

"It wasn't rape. She wanted it and she came. I made sure of it. Anyway, after we were done, I was so---so psyched by getting away with it that I wanted to try it again and she let me. Debi was always a little stingy with do-overs. We'd do it once, then she'd get to feeling naughty or her inner prude would sing out and then I couldn't even cop an over-the-clothes feel even if I were patting her down while she was on fire. She let me that night though. She wouldn't have done that if it was rape."

Dr. Oatman had moments when he could prove his worth as a therapist. Martin usually hated those moments, but he wasn't prepared to deal with what that said about him and his road to recovery walk.

"She let you? That sounds pretty passive."

Debi had lain perfectly still where she usually clawed at him, hooked her legs over his hips, and fucked him back even harder than he was already giving it to her. She urged him on no matter how fast he was already going and she never stopped moving, twisting, turning, panting, moaning, _Debi_. That was the first time Martin had ever had sex with her when it was just---just him working away. A real one-hit wonder. He'd not wanted to think about it afterwards and it had been embarrassingly short. She'd held him so tight he almost couldn't breathe and she had said she loved him. Debi hadn't said that before. Not really said it anyway. Martin had believed her then.

"She told me she loved me."

"I bet she did. The sex though, Martin, was it typical for you? Was she your first?"

Martin wondered at the mind of a psychiatrist sometimes. What did that honestly have to do with anything? They'd been talking about the day he'd decided that he would turn professional, now they were discussing firsts?

"First what? First sexual encounter? First time I'd had intercourse? First what? It doesn't matter. I don't see how that matters. We had a lot of sex. I was seventeen and so was she and we were close. She was always there for me. I don't know. It was good. She was good. I don't want to talk about sex with Debi."

"Have you had many lovers since Debi?"

"I've had lovers. I've had experiences. Sexual experiences since Debi."

Martin didn't know why he was being defensive. Oatman had a tendency to make him feel like he had to really _explain_ how his mind worked when Martin had never felt like he was anything more than a rational kind of guy with rational kind of one-way thinking. He saw grey shades, sure, but mostly he was a black-and-white kind of guy.

"Why do you think that you're fixated on her then? Your subconscious is telling you something, Martin. Are you sure it's not that you're feeling guilty for treating her badly or abusing her during your relationship as teenagers? Young lovers who should have treated one another gently and you simply couldn't control yourself with her and now that's easily visible as foreshadowing to the man you've become?"

"I treated her gently! I can control myself. I control myself."

Martin's breath sounded loud enough to drown out the pointlessly tick-tock-tick-ing grandfather emanating from its impressive, expensive casing. He wondered if Dr. Oatman could sense his rising pulse, his rapidly increasing expiration rate. He wondered if Oatman knew that Martin wasn't _really_ really joking when he said _I know where you live_. He was Martin Blank, a professional, and he could control himself.

"Martin, don't you think that it's time that you admitted that you have difficulty sometimes with your emotionally state? Controlling that emotional state, that is to say, and that a man such as yourself should have absolute control over himself at all times because he's simply too dangerous to drift in his control even the slightest bit. Don't you see how dangerous you can be, Martin? How much damage you could inflict on some innocent bystander?"

"Yes! Yes, that's why I joined the army. I went to them, I told them 'I think I'd like to kill people.' That's when they gave me the test, I met certain criteria, and I went away. I didn't put any innocent bystanders into any danger, Dr. Oatman. I know exactly where the moral lines in the sand are drawn. I'm very careful and I'm a complete professional about it."

Oatman had actually picked his pen up which lead Martin to believe that they might be getting back on the right road together, but he put it back down just as quickly. That road might be a lonely one if Martin didn't learn what to say and how to say it to keep his guide with him.

"Martin, you kill people. You kill people for money, but you still kill people. That's more than putting innocents in danger, that's deliberately harming them!"

"Oh come on, Dr. Oatman! They're not innocents! None of them are innocent. You reap what you sew, right? Chances are, I show up at your door, you did something to bring me there."

Martin sent him his most pointed look and Oatman seemed to read the message loud and clear. He was always free to be surprised by the doctor's thinking though.

"Have you ever considered taking your own advice, Martin?"

Martin couldn't resist any longer. He slid back up in the chair and looked carefully over his should as he answered.

"Believe me, Doctor. I take it all into consideration. Very careful consideration. I know what I'm doing."

"This Debi? You ever think what you might have been doing to her by leaving her to go pursue your lofty goals of becoming a professional murderer?"

Martin stood up, cracking his spine, his wrists, the joints in his knees that ached from too many hours spent kneeling in place. He did not look at Dr. Oatman or his impressive, expensive carpeting.

"I was saving her from what I could become. This is Debi Newberry we're talking about. She _was_ an innocent, Dr. Oatman. There was no way I could have stayed around, went to prom, danced with her in that big, expensive dress like I hadn't spent the whole day with the knowledge that I could kill a man -or several men- and not regret my actions in the morning. I couldn't taint her. I did the right thing."

"You stood her up on prom night, Marty. You left her sitting in her pretty dress with all her shining, happy, girlish dreams, and you went off without a backward glance. You don't think that she was tainted from that? You don't think you might go back to her and find her a little bit bitter?"

Martin carefully smoothed out his jacket, fastened the buttons and backed towards the impressive, expensive door that protected this office from the realities of the outside world. He did not look at Dr. Oatman and he fought hard to ignore the tick-tock-tick of the clock as it mocked him for a piss-poor liar.

"I think our session is up, Dr. Oatman. I'll be back next week. We can get back on that road to recovery thing, right? I'm very serious about this process. I'm a professional and I want very seriously for us to have a good professional relationship together. As two professionals. I'll be seeing you."

Martin bumped his way out the heavy door with a muffled slide and thump sound that he would never admit familiarity with in mixed company. Dr. Oatman sighed heavily on his side of the door and a thump came from within, but Martin knew it was just the doctor's head hitting the impressive, expensive desk as he thanked whatever gods he believed in for having survived another session with him.

That was all this was really. Survival.

As Martin left the building, he flipped his cell phone on and dialed up Marcella for the latest. He did not consider what it said about him that he only felt alive when he was recounting events that had happened a whole decade in his past. He was surviving and that was what mattered. Live free or die. Or something.

Martin resolved to bring that up next week in his session with Oatman. They could talk more about life themes or resolutions to live by or something. He could do it. The road to recovery is long, but how many roads must a man walk down, right? Something. Right. He was alright. He was a professional.

 

 

 


End file.
